Special Dossier: DEATH – Plastination

The show highlights plastination, a preservation technique whereby an embalmed body is drained of its natural fluids and injected with a polymer solution. The body is posed and then cured and hardened into position.

Plastination is viewed as a novel and useful alternative to the traditional post-death options like burial and cremation. Proponents see the process as potentially useful to medical students, who some say rely too much on computer models instead of working with real bodies.

Body Worlds is the brainchild of German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, the inventor of plastination who also created a stir in 2002 by performing the first public dissection in 180 years in London. He defended the event by claiming that human anatomy and pathology should be available to the public at large, not just the medical community.
The same reasoning is part of the motivation behind the current show.

"The Body Worlds exhibition is intended to help educate people and provide the opportunity for lay people in particular to gain a greater understanding of the body and its functions," notes the official brochure of von Hagens' Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany.